At Least It Hasn’t Been Cancelled Yet
An anonymous report from Video Games Chronicle suggests that Ubisoft has rebooted development of Skull & Bones. It seems the project is being shifted towards a ‘Games as a Service’ model going forward. If the reports are to be believed, this change happened sometime last year.
According to the anonymous source, the repeated delays were part of an ongoing struggle for identity. Skull & Bones was getting lost among Ubisoft’s many other AAA open world adventure titles. The solution allegedly lies in regular content updates of an ever-shifting game world, one that changes according to the will and actions of the playerbase. Think less Assassin’s Creed IV, and more Fortnite: Pirate Edition.
We don’t know how much is being scrapped, but we do know that the team has been deathly silent for just over a year. The game’s last Twitter post was from May 15th 2019, where they talked about battening down the hatches to make the game “as awesome as it can be.” Beyond the sparse and scattered social media announcements, we’ve mostly gotten updates from financial calls addressing delays. Even Ubisoft’s E3 replacement event failed to mention the game at all. It remains to be seen whether the game’s nebulous Spring 2021 release date is still on the table after this, but my guess is that will also change.